Autonomous Driving Safety

It wouldn’t have to do that much driving flawlessly - many crashes occur without there being a fatality.

Speeding doesn't kill people, crashing kills people.

You don't need to drive dangerously (unless "driving at all" means "driving dangerously") to hit a tree, it suffices if someone else does drive dangerously. Most people in traffic accidents are victims, not perpetrators, and I see little point in making victims suffer.

"Likely to cause an accident" is not your concern?

Humans are not so bad as drivers. Your example is an event from over 2 decades ago and was deemed newsworthy. Humans drive in all kinds of conditions but death rate is about 1 per 100 million miles driven. A search reveals crashes to be on the order of hundreds of collisions per 100 million miles driven. Age, country, intoxication level, road design and laws, road and environmental conditions also play a major role such that accident rates for someone aged 30+ in a Northern European country are

It's so people get into accidents and they can say 'oh told you so'

Just to be clear, this means there's fewer accidents but the ones the do happen are more fatal?

also you're more likely to crash somewhere where you don't hit anybody else

the vast majority of collisions are human error. it doesn't need to reduce 100% to be useful

Being safer in a crash doesn't make it okay to crash.